Nick Schillace and Jennie Knaggs are available for private instruction and group workshops while touring and playing festivals and while home in the Detroit area. Check here for current workshop info.

Nick Schillace has been teaching music for almost 20 years. Growing up with traditional music all around him, his early instruction on traditional American fingerpicking guitar began with annual trips to the Augusta Heritage Workshops in Elkins, WV where he learned from some of the great masters of the style. Early instructors included the late John Jackson, the late John Cephas, Pat Donahue, Del Ray, Steve James, Ernie Hawkins and many others. 

Nick’s interest in traditional music led him to full scholarship graduate studies at Wayne State University in Detroit, MI where he wrote a thesis on early recorded American folk music as applied through a model of analysis using the late John Fahey as the subject. The thesis, entitled John Fahey and American Primitivism: The Process of American Identity in the Twentieth Century, was completed in 2002. Follow the link below for an online version:

www.nickschillace.com/thesis/index.htm

Nick’s approach to teaching is equal parts folk tradition and formal study. He specializes in American fingerpicking guitar in both traditional and the American Primitive style. He also teaches clawhammer banjo, songwriting, music theory, and lectures on the history of American folk music in the twentieth century. Nick is the owner and an instructor at Orion Music Studio in Lake Orion, MI, which opened in 2000:

www.orionmusicstudio.com

Jennie Knaggs has traveled the world learning and sharing the folk traditions she loves. Equally at home yodeling, hollering, or gently crooning classic country songs, her enthusiastic demeanor and patient approach has made her an in demand instructor. Her versatility and command of technique has led her to collaborations as diverse as art film, a six week cultural study of the Appalachia region of the United States, an artist residency in Labro, Italy and performing with the a cappella quartet “Invisible Hands” which toured as part of a cultural exchange program in Kharkiv, Ukraine. 

In 2001 Jennie graduated from Antioch College with a degree in Performance and Community Development. Having taught in schools and in after school programs for 13 years, she now teaches voice, harmony singing, guitar, ukulele, songwriting, and performance privately and in workshops.